FIRE AND WATER
The vast majority of our mail deals with letters of deep stress and pain. The compounded hurt is sometimes too intense and we must put the letters aside until the Lord gives us the ability to read and prayerfully enter into the agony of which they write.
Do you ever feel as though you're being "tried by fire" or buffeted by the great emotional storm? And when the pain strikes, do you ever wonder, "Why me?"
The French painter Andre Matisse once watched the master Pierre Auguste Renoir, paint in his old age. It was almost too hard for Matisse to bear as he watched Renoir, his fingers pained and crippled by arthritis, work so meticulously at the canvas.
"Why do you continue?" Matisse asked.
Renoir thoughtfully replied, "Because the pain passes. The beauty remains." The master artist had learned that there are qualities that transcend even pain.
You see, any time you go through the fire and water of adversity, God has a reason for it. Or, as the author of old couplet has written:
Every falsehood that is said,
Every teardrop that is shed,
There is a reason.
But, if we trust Him
As we should...
All will work out for our good.
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28)
-Bil
